Feedback to the future: Building skills for work and lifelong learning
Start date
April 2026End date
March 2027Overview
How we receive, understand and act on feedback can have a profound effect on how we learn, develop and succeed at work. Yet moving from education into employment also means navigating a very different feedback environment.
At school or college, young people are accustomed to feedback that is frequent, structured and often led by a teacher. In the workplace, feedback can be more informal, irregular and dependent on individuals actively seeking it out. Learning how to ask for feedback, interpret it constructively and turn it into positive action is therefore an important, but often overlooked, part of becoming ready for work.
Feedback to the Future: Building skills for work and lifelong learning is bringing researchers, further education and sixth-form providers, careers professionals and employers together to address this challenge. Led by the University of Surrey in collaboration with Royal Holloway, University of London, the project has been funded through the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account as part of the 'Future of Work in Surrey' programme, a collaborative, place-based initiative connecting research expertise with organisations across Surrey to respond to local employment and skills challenges.
Team
Professor Naomi Winstone
Professor of Educational Psychology
Biography
Naomi is Professor of Educational Psychology in the Surrey Institute of Education at the University of Surrey. Naomi is also an Honorary Professor in the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University, Australia. She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a UK National Teaching Fellow.
Naomi is a cognitive psychologist specialising in the processing and impact of instructional feedback, and the influence of dominant discourses of assessment and feedback in policy and practice on the positioning of educators and students in feedback processes.
Her 2019 book co-authored with David Carless, Designing Effective Feedback Processes in Higher Education: A Learning-focused approach set the agenda for new approaches to feedback policy and practice. Using her research and institutional leadership experience, Naomi works with schools, universities and organisations across the world to embed learning-focused approaches to feedback into practice.
Co-Investigator
Professor Emma Mayhew
Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Experience) - Royal Holloway University of London
See profile
Co-Investigator
Dr Lucy Gill-Simmen
Associate Dean Education and Student Experience, Royal Holloway University of London
See profile
Co-Investigator
Professor Victoria Bourne
Associate Dean Education and Student Experience, Royal Holloway University of London
See profilePlanned Impact
Strong feedback skills are increasingly important in a world of work characterised by technological change, evolving roles, distributed teams and the need for continual learning and reskilling. Previous research led by Professor Naomi Winstone has shown that engagement with feedback can be limited among young people, that confidence plays an important role in determining how effectively feedback is used, and that targeted interventions can improve feedback skills. Feedback to the Future takes this research into a new setting: the transition between education and employment.
The project will explore how young people aged 16–19 can be better equipped to seek feedback proactively, make sense of what they hear, manage the emotional response that feedback can sometimes generate, and use it to identify practical next steps for their own development. Importantly, the project is not only asking young people to become better at receiving feedback, it will also explore how educators, careers professionals and employers can create better feedback experiences for young people entering the workplace.
Rather than developing resources for young people and employers in isolation, the team is using a co-design approach, ensuring that those who will ultimately use the resources help to shape them. The project brings together the University of Surrey and Royal Holloway with the S7 Surrey Sixth Form College Consortium, Activate Learning's Guildford and Farnham Colleges, and employer networks connected to these education providers. This enables the project to draw on perspectives from sixth-form and further education settings, including vocational and apprenticeship pathways, as well as employers with first-hand experience of recruiting and supporting young people. By working with careers advisers and teachers to understand the feedback challenges young people currently encounter, researchers will bring education providers and employers together through dedicated co-design sessions to explore those challenges and develop ideas for practical resources.
These ideas will be translated into new tools, tested with partners and refined in response to their experiences. By the end of the initial project, the team aims to produce three core outputs:
- A co-designed resource toolkit for young people, teachers and careers advisers, and employers;
- An initial evaluation capturing learning from trialling the resources; and
- A Surrey practice brief, sharing findings and recommendations to support wider adoption.
In the short term, the project aims to increase young people’s confidence and ability to seek, interpret and use feedback as they move into work, while equipping educators, careers advisers and employers with practical, research-informed resources to support them. Longer term, it aims to enable smoother transitions from education to employment by developing more adaptable and resilient young people who can learn from feedback, respond to setbacks and continue developing throughout their careers. By also helping employers create more effective feedback processes, the project has the potential to improve onboarding, development and retention, while generating evidence and scalable resources that could be embedded within wider careers and employability provision and adapted for other education-to-work transitions.